American
boxer, Three times World Heavyweight Champion, embraced Islam in 1965.

"I have had many nice moments in my life. But the feelings I had while
standing on Mount Arafat (just outside Makka, Saudi Arabia) on the day of the
Hajj (the Muslim pilgrimage), was the most unique. I felt exalted by the indescribable
spiritual atmosphere there as over one and a half million pilgrims invoked God
to forgive them for their sins and bestow on them His choicest blessings.

It was an exhilarating experience to see people belonging to different colours,
races and nationalities, kings, heads of state and ordinary men from very poor
countries all clad in two simple white sheets praying to God without any sense
of either pride or inferiority.

It was a practical manifestation of the concept of equality in Islam."

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One of the first public figures in America to be identified with Islam was
boxer Muhammad Ali, to whom more media attention has been given than to any
other athlete. He has appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated more than
thirty times, and his name and face are known to people all over the world.

Ali
was born Cassius Marcellus Clay in 1942 in Louisville, Kentucky, of a Baptist
mother and Methodist father. He started boxing at a young age so as to be able
to buy his parents a car; by the time he was in his twenties, many considered
him the greatest fighter of all time. After winning the Rome Olympics in 1960,
he became the darling of the American public-handsome, charming, and greatly
successful. In 1963 he recorded an album in which he extolled his own merits
("I am the greatest") in a stunt that brought him even greater publicity
but also earned him some ridicule.

Eighteen days
before he defeated Sonny Liston to become heavyweight champion of the world,
Clay joined the "Black Muslims," influenced by Malcolm X. After his
conversion he seems visibly to have changed, bragging less about his accomplishments
and stressing the importance of Islam as a spiritual force in his life. Adopting
the Muslim name Muhammad Ali, he has always insisted, was one of the most important
occurrences in his life. He did it, however, at a time when the Nation of Islam
was unpopular in the United States. The boxing commission was furious, and from
a hero Ali quickly became the object of suspicion, Meanwhile, when the rift
in the Nation occurred between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm, Ali to the deep
disappointment and hurt of his friend Malcolm, sided with Elijah, whom he believed
to be God's messenger. In 1967, in opposition to the Vietnam War, Ali refused
to be inducted into the armed forces on the grounds that he was a minister in
the religion of Islam. The New York State Athletic Commission suspended his
boxing license and withdrew his recognition as champion.

Muhammad
Ali's later career has been extremely checkered, and it is generally recognized
that he fought well beyond the time that his physical condition allowed. He
was finally diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. Meanwhile, he also did a great
deal of public speaking about his life and about Islam, while the government
continued surveillance on him as a member of the Nation of Islam. Never a strong
advocate of the Nation's racist doctrines, he did preach racial pride and became
a hero of Black Americans.

Today, Ali continues to practice Islam, lending his name to the distribution
of Islamic education materials. He has been a significant contributor to the
financing of Islamic institutions such as Masjid al-Faatir, the first mosque
built from the ground up in the city of Chicago. The truly great men of history,
he has said, want not to be great themselves but to help others and be close
to God.